Fitness trackers for the unfit – they take off the calories so you don’t have to
“Exercise time, Fred. Got to get up and walk to the fridge again.”
Huawei has developed a new fitness tracker that over-reports activity levels and calories used, and stores the data on a srver in China.
The new Huawei WatchNot 2 is aimed at obese and lazy people or, as the advertising puts it, “those with an excessive lifestyle”. It’s for anyone who desperately wants to lose weight but just can’t be arsed to exercise or cut down on food.
The WatchNot 2 has three fitness settings. Easy Going is recommended for beginners. It over-reports by just 10% so users get used to exercising more and burning more calories without making any changes to their daily routine.
Up And Moving is recommended for users who are able to walk from the couch to the fridge. This activity does burn a few calories so this setting over-reports by 20%.
The more often users walk between the couch and fridge, the more calories they burn and the fitter they get.
Hey Slow Down There is for the fitness enthusiast who walks to the bus stop or train station or who is forced to climb stairs as part of their daily routine. This mode over-reports by 50% so users can burn off twice the calories they take in and get fit in half the time.
The WatchNot 2 also has a clothing app. This links directly to Huawei’s Highest Quaality Chinese Clothing Store which under-sizes clothes. Users order a smaller size but receive the same size garment so they can prove to everyone that they have gone down a size.
Users on the Hey Slow Down There mode for a month receive clothes marked two sizes smaller, incentivising them to carry on their good exercise routine.
So uses are happy and Huawei gets lots of data on fat people.
Other major fitness tracker makers are also working on similar devices.
Watch out for the Apple iFat, the NoArmIn from Garmin and the Xiaomi Amazfat Btch.
Samsung is developing a folding tracker but early tests show it is not robust enough to withstand being sat on.
Are fitness trackers putting McDonald’s out of business?
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